Tata Motors, one of the leading passenger vehicle manufacturers, held the groundbreaking ceremony of its new production facility to manufacture cars and SUVs, at Panapakkam in Ranipet district, Tamil Nadu.

The facility will produce next-gen vehicles for Tata Motors and Jaguar Land Rover for both India and international markets.

The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin and N Chandrasekaran, Chairman of Tata Sons & Tata Motors.

Tata Motors Group intends to invest about INR 90 billion in this greenfield manufacturing facility, which has been designed for an annual production capacity of over 250,000 vehicles. Production will begin in a phased manner and progressively increase to reach this capacity over the next five to seven years.

M.K. Stalin said, “Tata Group is renowned for its contribution to nation building. It has a deep, historic relationship with Tamil Nadu with many of its manufacturing plants successfully operating in our state for the past several years. We welcome Tata Motors, an auto manufacturer of global scale, for setting up its newest manufacturing facility in Panapakkam, Ranipet.”

The state-of-the-art manufacturing facility has the potential to create over 5,000 employment opportunities (direct and indirect). In addition, the plant will be guided by principles of sustainability and use 100 percent renewable energy for running operations.

N Chandrasekaran added, “We are pleased to make Panapakkam as the home of our next generation of cars and SUVs, including electric and luxury vehicles. Tamil Nadu is a leading industrial state with progressive policies and an established automotive hub with qualified and talented workforce. Several Tata Group companies have been successfully operating from here. We now intend to build our advanced vehicle manufacturing plant here using cutting-edge manufacturing technology and world-class sustainability practices. Our endeavour will be to have a high share of women employees across levels, in line with our focus towards greater empowerment of women.”

Tata Elxsi, a leading global design and technology services company, has launched Coalesce powered by the Snapdragon Spaces XR Platform from Qualcomm Technologies.

The Coalesce is an XR-based immersive collaboration solution that brings together spatial computing, digital twins and simulations. It enables reviews of product models and supports collaboration features for sharing text/audio comments, notes, and screen recordings with globally dispersed teams, including a 360-degree review for immersive interaction.

The Snapdragon Spaces XR platform is enabling the way to a new frontier of spatial computing. The platform is empowering the creation of immersive experiences for XR devices that enable a multitude of enterprise use cases, for transformative spatial computing experiences.

Tata Elxsi’s Coalesce is a device-agnostic and web-based XR Solution on the Snapdragon Spaces platform. It uses a wide range of built-in tools, enables effortless navigation through intuitive controls and gestures and integrates advanced features for functional customisation. With cloud-integrated CMS and Gen AI integration, Coalesce delivers value to industries such as automotive, manufacturing, rail, and high-tech, blending domain expertise with digital innovation.

Unlike most XR platforms, Coalesce supports seamless, interactive design reviews with any VR device, using a custom UI. The platform is designed primarily for product design reviews like CAD but can also be used for training purposes across various sectors. For instance, Coalesce allows virtual walkthroughs of manufacturing processes for stakeholder collaboration and accelerates automotive design reviews, reducing the need for physical prototypes.

Aditya S Chikodi, Vice-President & Head - Industrial Design, Engineering, & XR, Tata Elxsi said, “Product design and engineering are taking a leap forward with augmented virtual reality and spatial computing. Coalesce introduces a revolutionary approach to digital twins and performance simulation, pushing the boundaries of XR in the product development process.”

Per Neilson, Senior Director, Product Management at Qualcomm Technologies said, “Tata Elxsi is working to bring the Coalesce platform to market, empowering industries and executive workforce to collaborate and make real-time decisions in product design and enterprise simulated environments. We are excited to see this platform brought to Snapdragon Spaces.”

The automotive wholesales numbers for September 2024 and Q2 FY2025 are out, seeing mixed results.

As per the latest data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), the apex body representing automakers in India, for September 2024, the passenger vehicle segment sold 356,752 which was down 1 percent YoY compared to 361,717 units sold last year.

On the other hand, the three- and two-wheeler segments continued to power the overall sales with 79,683 units and 2,025,993 units, seeing 7 percent and 16 percent growth respectively. This translates to a total of 2,462,431 vehicles sold in September, up 13 percent, compared to 2,186,270 units sold last year.

Similarly, in Q2 FY2025, a total of 6,663,875 vehicles were sold, registering a 9 percent growth YoY, as compared to 6,116,773 units sold last year.

Of this, passenger vehicle sales declined by 2 percent at 1,055,137 units; commercial vehicles barring buses were all in the red. A total of 220,643 commercial vehicles were sold, registering a decline of 11 percent YoY, as compared to 247,801 units sold last year.

The three-wheeler and two-wheeler segments continued to be the bright spot with sales of 208,718 units (7% YoY) and 5,179,349 units (13% YoY) respectively.

Shailesh Chandra, President, SIAM said, “The overall Indian automobile industry remained strong in Q2 2024-25 with 8.9 percent growth compared to Q2 2023-24. Two- and Three-Wheelers continued to post strong growth of 12.6 percent and 6.6 percent respectively, while passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles posted some degrowth in Q2 of 2024-25 compared to 2023-24. Heavy rainfall in key states and almost the entire ‘Shradh’ period falling in the month of September, did impact the sales numbers of some of the segments. With the rains easing and continued infrastructure spending, and the arrival of the festive season boosting consumption, we anticipate healthy demand in the next quarter.”

Rajesh Menon, Director General, SIAM said, “Although passenger vehicle segment de-grew by 1.8 percent in Q2 of 2024-25 as compared to Q2 of last year, for the 3rd time it crossed the 1 million mark in Q2, posting a sales of 1.06 million units. Two-wheelers posted sales of 5.18 million units in Q2 for FY 24-25 as compared 4.60 million units in Q2 of last year. Three-wheelers posted the highest ever sales of Q2 with 2.09 lakh units. Commercial vehicles posted a degrowth of 11 percent in Q2 of 2024-25 as compared to Q2 of last year, with sales of 2.21 lakh units.”

Altair, a leading computational intelligence software company has appointed Cimatron, part of Sandvik Group, has become its new global channel partner.

As part of the understanding, Cimatron will amplify the reach of Altair's unique design and simulation solutions within the Altair HyperWorks platform. These solutions – particularly Altair's injection moulding and metal forming solutions, Altair Inspire Mold and Altair Inspire Form – are designed to support the manufacturing industry.

Pavan Kumar, Senior Vice-President, Global Indirect Business, Altair said, "The collaboration will introduce Altair technology to customers that might not currently be using any simulation or data analytics tools, helping them compete more effectively in a global marketplace defined by cutting-edge digital transformation. Cimatron is an outstanding addition to our channel partner ecosystem, and we look forward to seeing how customers in the manufacturing space will benefit from this partnership."

Dan Marinac, Acting President, Cimatron said, "Cimatron has deep roots in the global mould, tool, and die business. Our customers have been searching for modern tools to validate their tool designs to reduce the time and costs of physical tryouts. Combining Cimatron's and Altair's technology will boost customer productivity and help users create higher quality, more efficient products for all manufacturing sectors.”

Cimatron states it searched for the ideal fit to bring ‘virtual prove out’ to its world-class mould and die design solutions. “Enabling digital twin means modelling, simulating, improving and exploring design alternatives. Predicting and avoiding manufacturing defects such as filling, packing, sink marks, meld/weld lines, cooling, warpage, windage, forming, cracks/splits, wrinkles, surface defects, and spring back will save our customers time and money. Altair’s technology reduces the learning curve and puts the power of simulation into the hands of toolmakers without the need for CAE specialists,”  Marinac said.

Founded in 1982, Cimatron develops and distributes CAD/CAM software for the manufacturing industry. It caters to all manufacturing sectors, offering specialised solutions for mould and die makers, as well as solutions for 2.5-5-Axis production milling and turning. It has subsidiaries in Asia, North America, and Europe, and works with certified independent service providers in over 40 countries worldwide.

Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons, is no more. Admitted to the Breach Candy hospital in Mumbai, the 86-year-old Tata Group patriarch passed away in the late hours of 9 October 2024 due to age-related ailments.

Spearheading the entry of Tata Motors into passenger vehicle manufacture rather than be a commercial vehicles manufacturer only, Tata took over the mantle of Tata Sons as the umbrella organisation of Tata Group of companies in 1991 from JRD Tata.

Chairman emeritus of the USD 130-billion salt-to-software group, Tata was always passionate about automobiles and aeroplanes as much as he was caring about animals. A skilled aviator who would fly a plane himself, Tata was also a philanthropist. 

Highlighting an ability to risk by acquiring business such as Corus Steel of UK, Jaguar Land Rover of UK (from Ford Motor Company) and develop products such as the Nano for the common people, Tata messaged on ‘X’ that the recent rumours circulating regarding his health should not be considered as he was undergoing check-ups for age-related medical conditions and was in good spirits

He was admitted to the hospital on 7 October 2024 with age-related medical conditions. He has left behind him robust organisations in the form of Tata Motors and others, which have set an example of how success is achieved and how benchmarks are set. 

Tata Motors began its journey in the late 80s in the passenger vehicle space with the Tata Estate, Sierra and later the Indica against the competition  that was superior in their abilities to make cars.  Tata drove Tata Motors from what looked like a failure to the success that it today enjoys in the passenger vehicle domain by building capabilities starting with the passnger vehicle factory within the company's Pune premises. 

While projects like the Nano peoples’ car were very close to his heart and an outcome of the ambition to provide the ‘middle-class’ families a safe mode of personal transport, Tata was quite passionate about cars himself.

While he was often seen driving a Honda City in Mumbai near ‘Bombay House’ (the Tata Group headquarters) and the NCPA where he launched the Indigo Marina estate based on the Indica platform, Tata loved loved fast cars and flying his own plane.

Born on 28 December 1937 to Naval Tata and Soonoo Commisariat, Tata was raised by his grandmother Navajbai Tata along with his younger brother Jimmy. He completed his degree in architecture in 1962 from Cornell University, New York. He did an advanced management programme at the Harvard Business School in 1975.

On the advice of JRD Tata, Tata turned down a job offer from IBM to join the family business and began his stint as an apprentice on the shop floor of Tata Steel, shovelling limestone and handling the blast furnace.

Taking charge of the National Radio & Electronics Company (Nelco) in the late 70s along with the Mumbai-based Empress Mills, Tata was the fourth generation in the dynasty.

Successfully steering the Tata Group out of the rough winds that it got into when some of the business such as Tata Telecom went down, Tata stepped down on 28 December 2012 on turning 75. He passed the reigns over to Cyrus Mistry as his successor.

As relations between Mistry and Tata soured, Tata moved ahead to take over the leadership of the Tata Group on 24 October 2014. He put N Chandrasekaran, who was then heading TCS, in the commanding position as the Tata Group chairman in January 2017.